Congress considers forest thinning bills


With catastrophic forest fires erupting year after year in the Western United States, heat from the public is putting pressure on Congress to do something about it. That has sparked a variety of bills in Congress to accelerate forest thinning.

Whatever passes is likely to be the most significant tinkering with federal forest policy since President Bill Clinton’s Northwest Forest Plan curtailed logging on federal land in the early 1990s. Unions that represent workers in forest product industries have a lot at stake.

Scientists now think that past efforts to put out small, naturally occurring fires have led to forests that are overstocked with potential fuel — with trees that are closer together and more prone to disease. Human-caused climate change may also be contributing, as more frequent droughts also leave forests more fire-prone.

Extremely dry conditions last year, for example, contributed to out-of-control fires throughout the West, including the worst fire in Oregon history — the Biscuit Fire in Southern Oregon, which consumed half a million acres of forest and led to firefighter deaths.

In the wake of the Biscuit fire, Oregon AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Brad Witt and other labor leaders worked to develop proposals to improve forest health, prevent loss of valuable timber, reinvigorate the timber economy, and provide skilled year-round work for workers in rural Oregon. Four months in the making, their position paper is a consensus of the unions that have a stake, including the Western Council of Industrial Workers (WCIW), an affiliate of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters; International Association of Machinists -Woodworkers; and Service Employees Local 503, which represents state forest workers.

They reason that with the federal government spending $1.2 billion to suppress the 2002 fires and $1.3 billion in 2000, it might be a better investment to spend half-a-bill-dollars a year instead to prevent catastrophic burns. The solution, they argue, is to employ people thinning trees, clearing brush, and initiating controlled strategic burns.

Most of the public attention has focused on the danger of the fires and the possible environmental harm of renewed logging. But for organized labor, the crisis is seen as a possible breakthrough for forest jobs that took a heavy hit in the 1980s and ‘90s.

“The untold story is how whatever cutting is done will support and sustain good jobs,” said Oregon AFL-CIO President Tim Nesbitt.

A number of bills have been introduced in Congress containing some version of the same ideas. They differ over whether they emphasize cutting near urban areas or in wilderness; how much they limit environmental appeals; how and how much they’re funded; and how much cutting of old growth they allow.

Though U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced a bill in late June, for much of the year the debate has been dominated by President Bush’s Healthy Forests Initiative. It was introduced in the House by Oregon Republican Greg Walden and Colorado Republican Scott McInnis as the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, and it passed the House May 21 in a 256-170 vote. While it had overwhelming support from Republicans, four-fifths of Democrats voted against it. Oregon’s delegation voted along party lines.

The bill applies to forests on federal land. Private companies would contract to remove brush and small, crowded and diseased trees that could contribute to outbreaks of fire. In return for this work, the companies would be allowed to cut some more valuable timber, including old growth.

Environmental groups would have only 15 days to file objections to the contracts, and those appeals would be resolved under a sped-up timetable, with limited discretion for judges to overrule the sales.

The bill has been endorsed by the Oregon State Building Trades Council and the Forest Products Industry National Labor Management Committee.

It’s opposed by most environmental groups and the majority of Democratic congresspeople, who say the bill does nothing to ensure that the thinning will take place in the urban-wilderness interface where forest fires pose the most risk to humans. They also contend the bill contains inadequate funding.

The bill passed the Senate Agriculture Committee in July, and is expected to be voted on by the full Senate during the current session. But because the bill’s backers were unsure whether it could survive a filibuster, a group of nine senators — including Wyden — began meeting in late September to work out a compromise amendment.

Details were still being worked out as of press time, but the compromise included an agreement to speed up environmental appeals somewhat, eliminating the part that would have allowed cutting in old-growth forests, and adding a requirement that at least half the money designated for thinning be spent in forests close to population centers.

Denny Scott, assistant director of the Western Council of Industrial Workers, says his union would support a law expanding forest thinning, whatever the details might be. Scott said his union supports the Walden bill and the other proposals.


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